After his Tuesday morning performance, Cedric Williams thought carefully about the music he’d played for residents at the Aldersgate Retirement Community.

“Once you hear it,” he said, referring to pieces by Ferdinando Carulli, “you’ll remember it.”

Williams, a student at Meridian Community College, played for the Aldersgate residents alongside students Seth Crocker, Jaywaun Johnson and guitar instructor Mitch Brantley. Together they make up a Guitar Ensemble class at the college — and on Tuesday, they were participating in My College Cares Day.

“They’re really listening,” said Brantley, thinking about the audience at Aldersgate. “They’re an attentive audience. It’s not just background music.”

Virginia Wheat, a resident at Aldersgate, said she was pleased to see the musicians and to hear their wide breadth of their selections.

“I was glad,” she said. “I knew they were coming … and I just enjoyed it.”

Marie Roberts, MCC’s director of recruiting and campus life, said My College Cares Day included more than 70 locations this year, and by Tuesday afternoon participation had risen to about 1,500 people, including MCC’s students, faculty and various staff members all offering their volunteer services throughout the community.

Roberts said the purpose of the day was twofold.

“On the one hand, it gives the college an opportunity to give back to the area we represent,” she said. “On the other hand, volunteering is as much of a growing experience for the person who does it as for the person who receives it. It’s another example of active learning.”

She noted a host of different kinds of sites where members of the MCC community served on Tuesday, including elementary schools, parks, special needs camps, animal shelters and other organizations where volunteering could play key roles. She said, too, that there were two special “Random Acts of Kindness” teams operating this year. She said one team assembled supplies for people enduring homelessness, and another brought lunch and other items to law enforcement officers.

Roberts said the college conducted a version of My College Cares Day in the 1990s, but then it fell away for a time.

“We brought it back in 2014,” she said.

A drive through the area at various times of the day on Tuesday might have turned up MCC members at all sorts of locations.

Becky Pierce, a Workforce Development receptionist, was with a group of MCC community members planting, weeding and doing other tasks outside the Meridian-Lauderdale County Public Library.

“We planted fall flowers and mulched the flower beds,” Pierce said. “The library provided the material, and we’re doing the labor.”

Pete Willis, who works in the MCC business office, was helping out upstairs in the Hope Village Thrift Store on Tuesday with another group of MCC community members.

“We’re trying to get the Hope Village Thrift (Store) geared up for Christmas,” noted Willis, who said he also works with property control and energy management at MCC. “We are making wreaths and Christmas decorations for them to sell in the shop.”

Willis emphasized the importance of the Hope Village’s mission in helping children.

“It gives them an opportunity to be successful,” he said.

Patricia Garnett, manager of the Hope Village Thrift Store, stressed the importance of volunteer work, especially as the holidays approach.

“We have mounds of donations that come in,” she said, noting that the volunteer work takes a burden from the store staff members. Other volunteers, she said, are also welcome.

“Volunteers are very helpful around this season,” she said.